This is the End

"On the twelfth day of the seventh month is when we'll ride the highway. Night decends, daylight end and like the light we'll fly."

And to misquote Radio Birdman we come to an end of the 2008 U19 Championship.

Short post - USA won.

Long post - more interesting.

REALLY lost closing ceremony type post - You are all lacrosse winners. Each of you. Personally.
And now I will list each of you by name. Aaron you are a lacrosse winner.....

As we remember before the closing ceremony dragged on and on we had Iroquois playing England for the bronze followed by the climax game of USA v Canada for the right to claim BEST IN THE WORLD.

First up we had the Bronze. Favourites Iroquois lived up to their pre game rating and ended up with the medal. Interestingly for a team that by their own words completely sucked against Canada they did not really seem to dominate against the lower ranked England.

England to their credit kept with them for most of the game and, like during their USA game, never crawled into the corner to wait for the scary men to go away. For long periods during the game the concept of an England win was still regarded as a realistic concept.

However I think the body language at the end of 1/2 time really summed England up. As recalled during the upset win over Australia, I had commented on the EXTREME hunger England had shown. That came they had ran from the change rooms after the break and re-entered the field as men with a mission.

Day instead, unpleasant heat not withstanding, three minutes before play was to re-start a slow drudge for people carrying lacrosse sticks started to make it's way on field. Message to me was clear -it's hot, we accept we cannot actually win from here and so are not going to bust a boiler over the whole issue. England it seemed, had reached the end of their challenge and knew they had only 40 mins of game time to play out before they could go off with the honour of having finished higher then Australia.

Again I state that they never completely gave up and surrended and there was a last quarter comeback that briefly made the idea of an upset result cross people's minds but the end Iroquois were much too skilled for them and finished 19 goals to 10.

So to the gold.

Credit to the organisers, the players and the stretch of the game itself but the build up successfully raised the excitement levels for the guestimated 3000 fans. I was slightly disappointed when the first roar was not for the whistle but waited 5 full seconds for the first possession.

Which, from non noted memory was actually Canadian.

As the game progressed this became rarer. USA managed to dominate the ball out of the center and matched with their agressive constant attack on goals they were showing against England a few days again, it more or less got to the stage of how long would the team defence hold out.

Get ball, attack goal.

Attack goal, score goals.

Repeat 80 minutes.